News flash, writing a Rails app without knowing your routes is pretty much impossible, and this just in $ rake routes takes forever [1] to run. So how can we build a Rails site with a minimum of time and a maximum of awesome? You can use the recently released Sextant Gem [2] to generate routes in your Rails app.

As it turns out if you benchmark the code in $ rake routes it is reasonably fast, the slow part comes from having to initialize the app environment every time it’s run. So lets take some of that code and put it in your already initialized web app. What you get is a whole lot of awesome in a tiny package. Next time you want to see your routes, just visit /rails/routes in your browser if you’ve got sextant installed, and you’ll see your routes in no time.

Sextant Output

To install add this to your Gemfile:

gem 'sextant'

Then run bundle install and you’re good to go. Start your server and visit /rails/routes

This in-browser information is local only. If you like Sextant tell your friends, and tell me @schneems

  • [1] Forever is measured in seconds
  • [2] Sextant is an old device for navigating. It can help you find your route on a long journey.